SCAF – Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) launches 2016 exhibition programme with ambitious moving image project by Mikhael Subotzky

Sydney, Australia: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) launches its 2016 exhibition programme with an ambitious moving image project titled WYE by the South African artist and Magnum photographer Mikhael Subotzky. Presented at SCAF from 18 March until 21 May 2016, WYE comprises an intersecting three channel, immersive video presentation juxtaposing visions of 19th Century colonial history, an ambivalent and perhaps traumatic  present day, with an imagined dystopic future.

Collapsing these three narratives and three time zones into one mesmerising filmic experience, the audience is taken on a journey through South Africa, Australia and the heart of the British Empire – England. Seated on low deck chairs that are placed on a sandy ground within an entirely black, mirrored gallery space, the monumentally scaled projections of WYE place the viewer at the unsteady centre of shifting geographical realities.

Working with German cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein (Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre and Woyzeck), Subotzky shot WYE on location in South Africa, after two years of developing the artwork’s expansive, time-shifting narrative. A specially constructed, spatially engaging audio component complements the arresting visuals of WYE, immersing visitors in a site of temporal and geo-cultural collapse.

Subotzky’s film, video and photographic works are concerned with the relationship between social storytelling and the formal strategies of image making. Subotzky has exhibited widely in museums and galleries, and received awards including the KLM Paul Huf Award, W. Eugene Smith Grant, Oskar Barnack Award and the Discovery Award at Rencontres d’Arles.

MEDIA CONTACT:
For interviews with the artist, Gene Sherman and general press inquiries, please contact
Claire Martin [art]iculate, 0414 437 588, Claire@articulatepr.com.au or
Kym Elphinstone, Kym@articulatepr.com.au, 0421 106 139.

EXHIBITION DETAILS:
Mikhael Subotzky: WYE will be on show at SCAF from 18 March until 21 May 2016
Opening night: Thursday 17 March, 6–8 pm.

SCAF is located at 16–20 Goodhope Street, Paddington, NSW and is open to the public free of charge Wednesday to Saturday 11am–5pm.

For SCAF’S associated Culture+Ideas programme visit: http://sherman-scaf.org.au.

MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY BIOGRAPHY:
Mikhael Subotzky was born in 1981 in Cape Town, South Africa, and is currently based in Johannesburg. Subotzky’s film, video and photographic works are concerned with the relationship between social storytelling and the formal strategies of image making.

Subotzky’s works have been exhibited and collected by The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Modern in London. He has received, amongst others, the 2012 Standard Bank Young Artist Award, the 2012 Discovery Award at Arles, the 2009 Oskar Barnack Award and the 2008 ICP Infinity Award. Previous monographs include Beaufort West (Chris Boot, 2008), Retinal Shift (Steidl, 2012) and Ponte City (Steidl, 2014), which recently won the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His work was recently included in All the World’s Futures at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Subotzky’s first body of photographic work, Die Vier Hoeke (The Four Corners), was an in-depth study of the South African penal system. Umjiegwana (The Outside) and Beaufort West extended this investigation to the relationship between everyday life in post-apartheid South Africa and historical and institutional structures of control within the country’s purposefully constructed framework.

Subotzky’s first major film installation, Moses and Griffiths 2012, has been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2013), Yale Art Gallery (New Haven, 2014) and Art Unlimited (Basel, 2014), and was recently acquired by the Tate Modern.

Ponte City, the product of a six-year collaboration with British artist Patrick Waterhouse, is a single installation of thousands of photographs and documents which focus on a 54-story building that dominates the Johannesburg skyline. Ponte City was awarded the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and has been exhibited at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh, 2014), FoMU (Antwerp, 2014) and Le Bal (Paris, 2014). Excerpts from the series have been shown at the Liverpool (2012) and Lubumbashi (2013) Biennales, as well as the South African National Gallery (Cape Town, 2010).

Subotzky’s most recent body of work, Show ‘n Tell was initiated while on residency at the Musée MAC/VAL (Paris, 2013). The installation Pixel Interface, the centrepiece of Show ‘n Tell, was recently included in All the World’s Futures at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Image:
Mikhael Subotzky
WYE, (film Still), 2016
Commissioned by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation,
with support from Sebastian Louis, Gene and Brian Sherman and Goodman Gallery
Image courtesy the artist